


A Part of the Routine

by doodlebug_nimbus



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Blood, Female Cloud Strife, Gen, Horror, One Shot, Psychological Horror, Weird Biology, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23973826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doodlebug_nimbus/pseuds/doodlebug_nimbus
Summary: A Shinra goon patrols the Midgar slums, alone at night. It's become clockwork for types like him.His fate will be no different from theirs.
Kudos: 12





	A Part of the Routine

**Author's Note:**

> ok i feel kind of stupid for talking about this at all but i have this weird headcanon where people that have j-cells in them tend to have...violent tendencies. like an insatiable hunger for violence. this hunger can't be ignored, as it only gets worse and worse the longer the person ignores it until they snap and go apeshit, basically. interestingly enough once this hunger is satiated, they will go back to normal (if they weren't inherently a violent person); however, this hunger never fails to return - it constantly haunts the person until they die. you'll see how it ties in to what's going on in this fic  
> i'm going to tag my genderbending from now on. not sure if that will scare away more people or not but i'll find out :P  
> btw i also tagged the remake and the comp too because i think they're relevant/still fit (if they're not, lemme know, i'll change it).  
> ok i'll shut up

It’s nights like these that the foot soldier can’t help but question his purpose. Nothing interesting outside of the usual sordid slum-drama. Girlfriends yelling at their boyfriends for chasing after wealthier women, boyfriends yelling at their girlfriends for chasing after wealthier men, the groups of homeless people huddling on various street corners, the occasional black-cloaked homeless person hiding in a cardboard box groaning to themselves, a few hecklers tossing whatever garbage they can find at his head (some even go as far as to sling mud or, worse, raw sewage), the dirty children carelessly playing in absolute filth—all of it, he’s seen a thousand times over. It’s interesting the first time if one’s a country bumpkin or a sheltered upper-class sort, but it’s hard to be interested when it’s the only thing one is subjected to.

Bitterness swelled within his chest as he recalled his excitement upon learning that he had been recruited. What a fool he was, to think that finally, he was going to something more than the nobody he was. He was still a nobody—just now he was a nobody with a fancy gun. His mother would’ve been so ashamed to learn about what he had become.

As he wallowed in his sudden existential misery, he passed by two women who mentioned something that caught his ear.

“You’re not serious, are you? That’s just another stupid rumor…like that one that claims the general’s still alive. He can’t be, it’s just not logically possible. Once that kid threw him into the reactor—oh, never mind, you don’t think that happened, either. I keep forgetting you’re a Shinra shill through and through.” The first one, a tall woman with her dark hair tied back, folded her arms after talking and frowned at who was, presumably, her friend.

The friend was short, with frazzled blonde hair. “No, you don’t understand! There’s actual evidence—it’s not just a rumor! People have _seen_ the bodies! _People have seen her!_ ”

“No photos? No videos?” The first woman rolled her eyes. “It’s so easy to lie, especially in times like these—”

“I’ve seen her!”

She said with a sneer, “Oh, really? Tell me, then. What does she look like?”

“It’s kinda hard to tell, really, her appearance isn’t consistent. Sometimes she’s taller than before, maybe slightly shorter than before…Her hair is extremely light blonde, but sometimes it’s more platinum blonde or sometimes even silvery. Her eyes are the same way. Sometimes they’re green, or blue, or even turquoise, uh, and sometimes her pupils are slits like—”

“Now you’re insinuating there’s a link between this folktale character and the dead general? Honestly, Laureen, you’re hopeless…”

He peeled away from them, getting annoyed that these ladies were going nowhere with their conversation. Though they did bring to mind the latest onslaught of rumors permeating not just his rank, but the ones above him: that after years of being missing, Cloud Strife had returned with a taste for blood, apparently roaming the streets at night and butchering a handful of Shinra troops every night she appeared. If it was true, no one understood the sudden change in behavior or why she was seemingly only going after people affiliated with the mega-corporation, considering that she was once one of them, too. Granted, it wasn’t unusual for members of SOLDIER to grow disheartened with their military lives and break away to slink into normalcy, or become threatening vagabonds that launched mini-terrorist operations against important Shinra facilities, yet no one had ever diced up the bodies of foot soldiers and—as some rumors suggested—devoured their remains. He certainly didn’t doubt the possibility of the first half, while the second half bordered on urban legend territory.

Either way, he refused to believe it until he saw it.

He approached the worst part of the slums, where the population started to thin and the urban decay began to magnify in every corner. There was a constant stench of sewer rot looming over everything in this area, and despite Shinra’s best efforts, the stench remained. The ground sloshed under his boots, and he spied over his shoulder at every turn. The people here were especially bad, he was told by one of his cohorts. They would murder you if it meant they got some amusement out of it.

He wondered how much longer he had to keep patrolling; it wasn’t like he found anything troublesome or of note, like usual. Pathetic, useless. He was wishing he never joined when something latched onto one of his ankles.

With a cry, he pulled away and looked at what it was—the hands of one of those black-cloaked people he had seen twitching and moaning in other parts of the slums. This one happened to be a woman, her hood obscuring most of her facial features beyond the few messy blonde bangs shadowing her eyes. He thought nothing of the bangs, until he noticed her smile widening as she rose her head.

Before he could even reach for his gun, she slid away from him and got to her feet. And in a dramatic flourish, she tore the cloak off her gaunt figure, confirming what he wanted least of all.

Cloud stared him down, her smile shrinking to a flat line, her vacant green eyes brimming with an inhuman glow. She tilted her head like she was scoping him out, impassivity to detached curiosity crossing her face only for it to disappear as quickly as it had manifested.

She was gone when he blinked.

He didn’t care if his patrol was incomplete. His life mattered far more than any trite “mission” his higher-ups could’ve thrown at him.

She hadn’t shown up again—yet—and that made him more anxious. He found himself constantly peering past his shoulder as he paced back the route he treaded, as if that would spare him from her wrath. She didn’t even have her sword with her when she appeared, but that raised more questions than her finishing the job right then and there. Was she cruel enough to play games with her prey? Or was she that disconnected from other people that the value of human life was just a toy to her? What was her ultimate goal?

Slum life continued as normal around him like nothing ever happened, leaving him alienated, leaving him feeling as though he himself was approaching the brink of madness. She might’ve been some sort of mako-induced hallucination for all he knew, especially after remembering all the rumors entailing her and her brutalities. However, denying the smallest grain of truth to those rumors wasn’t exactly sounding smart, either…

She was watching him from the back of an alleyway he passed. He caught her at the last second, only for him to turn his head and see garbage piling up in the alleyway. His pace picked up. He wasn’t sure if there was a sword behind her back.

It seemed as though he was never going to escape in time. There were so many more twists and turns and run-ins with anti-Shinra types than he recognized, and, with his mind being on loop, he inevitably wondered if this was again one of her tricks. No one knew the full extent of her power, anyway. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, he contemplated the chance she could bend reality to her will. Her disappearances couldn’t be explained through normal means.

The foot soldier came to a halt upon sighting a familiar shortcut—a linked system of alleyways. Waves of relief washed over his mind, and the sweat beading on his brow felt as though all of it evaporated.

A few minutes into the shortcut turned into a couple of hours, somehow. After he passed a certain, indeterminate point, there came the unmistakable sound of boots on the tenements’ rooftops, above and around him. He hesitated for an instant, flashes of her face in his mind, then he pressed on.

The sounds grew louder with every step he took. Closer. He was running now, faster as the boots sped up too, the exit seeming farther and farther than he remembered. He refused to die, especially as a nobody. He had to live, so he could eventually get a name for himself, because otherwise no one will remember him and being forgotten was what scared him the most, he couldn’t die as yet another nameless foot soldier—

Cloud descended from the rooftops at last, landing on her feet and only a short distance away from him, her sword already ready in her hands. The edge was plunged in deep red, glistening faintly due to the wash from long-reaching streetlights. Her expression was unreadable aside from its blankness.

His heart racing, his head spinning, he did the only thing he knew he could do: he fired. Multiple times. Of the ones that landed, including two in her chest and the one directly between her eyes, she didn’t even bother to blink. Instead, she slowly advanced forward, the blood seeping from her wounds painting her translucent, porcelain skin and rendering her ethereal, specter-like. As she gradually raised the sword off the ground, like she was savoring the moment, he unloaded the last of his ammo into her, whimpering at her empty, intensive stare. A small smile rose on her face at the sound of his rifle’s desperate clicking.

The bullets were being pushed out of their holes thanks to extra flesh rapidly filling up the space, and it wasn’t long after she was shot that they fell out of her body, their casings rattling against the asphalt. Only the streams of red were left.

“W-what…are you?” he said in a distant, hoarse voice. His body trembled, he felt sick, and deep within himself he didn’t want to move—his fate loomed over him. “What the hell are you?”

She kept moving toward him. Her smile widened.

Not waiting for an answer, he immediately snapped around to run the path he came in.

It was a futile action, of course—he couldn’t escape the shortcut, and never again would he live. Not with her sword piercing his torso.

His last few moments were spent as a mess of blurry colors, tears burning his cheeks, coughing and spluttering blood while she brought him closer to her, still smiling, watching as he struggled and failed to remove himself from her blade. His weapon clattered onto the ground, accompanying the extruded bullets.

Her bright green eyes and her smile, all surrounded by that horrifying scarlet soaking her figure, were his last memory.

She studied him going limp, and with him still impaled on her sword, she leapt out of the alleyways and landed on the rooftops, fleeing into the darkness from whence she came.

It was another normal night for Cloud Strife.

**Author's Note:**

> cloud strife be a normal human being challenge 2020  
> also rip random-ass foot soldier #256


End file.
